Mixed Race Studies

Thank you for making CMRS 2012 and Mixed Roots Midwest a success

Laura Kina
2011-11-04

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
DePaul University

We’ve just finished four days of the Critical Mixed Race Studies conference and Mixed Roots Midwest festival hosted by DePaul University in Chicago, IL. Thank you to all of the volunteers and sponsors who made this possible. I look forward to seeing you again in 2014…

Read the entire article here.

2012 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference

DePaul University
Student Center
2250 North Shefield Avenue
Chicago, Illinois
2012-11-01 through 2012-11-04

“What is Critical Mixed Race Studies?,” the biennial Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, will be held at DePaul University in Chicago on November 1-4, 2012.

The CMRS conference brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines nationwide. Recognizing that the diverse disciplines that have nurtured Mixed Race Studies have fostered different approaches to the field, the 2012 CMRS conference is devoted to the general theme “What is Critical Mixed Race Studies?”
 
Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) is the transracial, transdisciplinary, and transnational critical analysis of the institutionalization of social, cultural, and political orders based on dominant conceptions of race. CMRS emphasizes the mutability of race and the porosity of racial boundaries in order to critique processes of racialization and social stratification based on race. CMRS addresses local and global systemic injustices rooted in systems of racialization.

For more information, click here. View the final schedule here.

I will deliver my paper, “Barack, Blackness, Borders and Beyond: Exploring Obama’s Racial Identity Today as a Means of Transcending Race Tomorrow,” during the Session Three panel titled, “Assessing Mixed—Race Iconography: Barack Obama and Tiger Woods” from 14:15-15:45 CDT (Local Time) in Room 313.  The abstract of my paper is below:

The racial identity of President Barack Obama has been the topic of considerable discussion and debate. Despite the fact that Obama has always identified unambiguously as black—most significantly in March, 2010 after filling out his census form—commentary continues to the point of unilaterally referring to him as “biracial” within some camps.
 
Using three separate frameworks, I explain why Obama is indeed black.  Firstly, I show that Obama is black within the framework of self-identification as crafted by the multiracial identity movement. Secondly, I show via an ethnological framework that Obama’s heterogeneous ancestry reinforces rather than weakens his cultural connection with black Americans.  Lastly, and most importantly, I show within a sociological framework, that Obama is black because we perceive him as such.

Furthermore, I show how the multiracial movement reifies rather than blurs racialized boundaries; and that Obama’s blackness creates one of the greatest challenges to this movement.  Rather than concluding with a seemingly triumphalist Afro-centric focus, I will instead explain how Obama’s “blackness” from “white/black” parentage can be used to exemplify the social construction of race and can provide us a means to create meaningful discourses that may lead us beyond the illogical nature of racialization.

Mixed Race Issues to be Examined at DePaul University Forum

DePaul University
News Release
2012-10-29

As Americans of mixed racial ancestry continue to grow in number and diversity, the demographic, social, political and cultural implications for the country become more complex. These issues will be examined from a variety of perspectives at a groundbreaking conference that will bring scholars and artists from around the United States and the world to DePaul University Nov. 1 through 4.
 
The conference will include 50 programs featuring research presentations, panel discussions and performances that explore various aspects of the emerging field of Critical Mixed Race Studies. More than 150 presenters from the U.S. and other countries, including the Philippines and the United Kingdom, are expected to attend.

Individual programs will examine issues such as discrimination against mixed race persons, mixed race student organizations and mixed race gender and sexuality issues. Individual panel topics include: “Assessing Mixed Race Iconography: Barack Obama and Tiger Woods;” “Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Mixed Race Identities;” and “Media, Celebrity and Beauty: The Visuals of Mixed Race.”
 
All programs are free and open to the public. A full schedule of events, times and locations is online here.

For more information, click here.

Scholars fix gaze on changing racial landscape

Chicago Tribune
2012-10-29

Dawn Turner Trice

Laura Kina, 39, is half Asian-American and half white. Her husband is Jewish, and her stepdaughter is half Hispanic. Her family, including her fair-skinned, blue-eyed biological daughter, lives near Devon Avenue in the heart of Chicago’s Indian and Pakistani community.

Kina, who’s a DePaul University associate professor of art, media and design, views her life as a vibrant collage of culture, religion and race, pieced together by chance and choice.

“I grew up in the ‘Sesame Street’ generation,” she said. “This is just my normal.”

On Thursday, Kina and DePaul professor Camilla Fojas will begin a four-day conference on campus that explores the emerging academic field of critical mixed-race studies. Hundreds of scholars and artists from around the country and globe are expected to participate in research presentations, spoken-word performances and discussions.

Kina and Fojas, who hosted a similar conference in 2010, hope to cover an array of topics on identity, discrimination and racial “passing.” Additionally, panels will tackle issues such as the role of the mixed-race person as exotic “everyman” in advertising and film, and the impact of President Barack Obama and Tiger Woods, among others, as biracial icons…

Read the entire article here.

I think balancing personal experience and personal stories with an understanding of our past and also scholarly work and research… finding a balance between those.  Because that we find that people who are really interested in the emotional/personal stories tend to not have a lot of background information.  And then we find vice-versa, that the people who are really experts in history don’t know how to get on the Internet. So yes, and for stories especially… We have a lot of people really interested in storytelling but have no background in context. So we need historians who can find a way to make their information interesting to young people.

Fanshen Cox, “Community-Based Multiracial Movements: Learning from the Past, Looking toward the Future” (roundtable discussion at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, November 5-6, 2010).

The other thing is, as Reggie [G. Reginald Daniel] said, Reggie knows that we are all multiracial.  He doesn’t need a genetic test to prove that.  I mean, we know that. Even though this can tell us new information—and I think it is an opportunity for conversation—it’s not enough because we already know it and it hasn’t been enough.  You know that slave owners knew those brown children where their children. Did it matter?  They knew those were multiracial children were related to them.  It didn’t make a difference… To me it is a political revolution that we need to see that we’re connected as human beings.  Genetics isn’t going to do it by itself.

Dorothy Roberts, “A Rx for the FDA: Ethical Dilemmas for Multiracial People in Race-Based Medicine” (panel at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, November 5-6, 2010).

Organizers of the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference to be Featured Guests on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Bonus Episode: Organizers of the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference
When: Sunday, 2010-10-24, (20:00 EDT, 17:00 PDT), [Monday, 2010-10-25, 00:00Z, 01:00 BST]

Don’t miss out on this great chat and preview of the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference—with the conference organizers!

Fanshen Cox, Tiffany Jones, and myself will participate in a Greg Carter (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) moderated round-table discussion titled “Exploring the Mixed Experience in New Media” on 2010-11-05 from 10:15 to 12:15 CDT at the conference.  For a complete schedule, click here.